PARIS — French authorities confirmed Thursday that the Islamic State militant suspected of masterminding the deadly Paris attacks was killed in a police raid the previous day.
The body of Abdelhamid Abaaoud was found riddled with bullet and shrapnel wounds in the charred rubble of the raided apartment in a northern Parisian suburb. Investigators used fingerprint analysis to confirm his identity, prosecutors said.
At least one other person, a woman who detonated an explosives vest, died during the seven-hour siege in St.-Denis and eight were taken into custody. Some French media reports indicated that the woman was Abaaoud’s cousin.
On Thursday, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Abaaoud had been involved in four of six terrorist plots thwarted since last spring.
Abaaoud, a Belgium national of Moroccan descent, had traveled to Syria to join Islamic State, the ultra-fundamentalist al-Qaida breakaway faction that controls large parts of Syria and Iraq. By his own account in an Islamic State magazine, Abaaoud had become an external operative specializing in organizing attacks in his native Europe.
He has been linked to plots in Belgium and France, including an August attack on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris that was thwarted when three Americans subdued the gunman.
But the Paris assault — which killed 129 people and injured hundreds more at restaurants and cafes, a soccer game and a rock concert — was by far his deadliest and most sensational.
Abaaoud’s apparent ability to travel between Syria and Europe without being detected, even though he has been on the law enforcement radar for years and had international warrants against him, has highlighted grave European security lapses.
French authorities were not aware until Monday that he had returned to Europe, Cazeneuve acknowledged. An intelligence service “from a country outside Europe” informed France that Abaaoud had been in Greece, the interior minister said.
Details about when and how Abaaoud entered that country remain unknown. However, his presence in Greece suggests that he may have entered clandestinely using the same route followed this year by legions of Syrian war refugees.
Most asylum seekers cross into Greece on small boats from Turkey. Security authorities and experts have long voiced fears that the chaotic migrant flow could provide cover for terrorism operatives. Beleaguered officials have little time to perform in-depth checks on the many migrants arriving on Greek shores.
It seemed unlikely that Abaaoud would have used his real identity, since warrants fingered him for terrorist-related activities. But he could have used a fake or stolen passport.
There were reports that a Syrian passport found near one of the dead suicide bombers who struck outside the sports stadium Friday belonged to a dead Syrian soldier. Fingerprints taken from the body matched those of a presumed asylum seeker who arrived in Europe via Greece in October, raising the possibility that Abaaoud entered the same way.
French authorities suspect that Friday’s attack was largely organized in Syria and Belgium, where Abaaoud apparently had access to a team of loyal, extremist foot soldiers from backgrounds similar to his own.
Hundreds of Europeans have traveled to Syria and joined Islamic State and other radical groups. Their European passports and knowledge of Western society are key assets for those plotting terrorist activities, experts say.
On Thursday, the Belgian prosecutor’s office said police had detained two suspects in connection with the Paris attacks after a series of raids in and around the capital, Brussels. Seven other people with links to one of the attackers were being questioned, but were not thought to have been directly involved in the attacks, the Belgian broadcaster RTBL reported.
Six of the raids were connected to Bilal Hadfi, one of the three suicide bombers who struck outside the stadium, prosecutors said. A French national, Hadfi had been living in Belgium and was reported to have spent time in Syria.
French President Francois Hollande has said that his country is “at war” with Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for last week’s rampage.
On Thursday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned lawmakers that the militants could strike with chemical and biological weapons.
Two U.S. officials confirmed that American intelligence agencies were investigating reports that Islamic State intends to use such weapons in Europe. But they said there is no evidence at this time that the group has the technical ability to do so or has any active plots in the works. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments.
Seven assailants died on Friday, six of them by detonating suicide vests and the other shot by police. Investigators have said that at that at least one and possibly two other attackers remain at large.
Abaaoud was one of six children born to a Moroccan shopkeeper in the Brussels borough of Molenbeek St. Jean, which has a large Moroccan immigrant community. The sprawling district across an industrial canal from the capital’s hip downtown has become notorious as an incubator of Islamist radicals who traveled to Syria and joined extremist groups.
He came from a working-class family but lived relatively well, at one point attending a prestigious private school, according to media accounts in Belgium. But Abaaoud turned to petty crime, spent time in jail in Belgium and fell under the influence of extremist Islam.
Abaaoud went to Syria and became an online recruiter of European jihadists before evolving into a clandestine operative, planning attacks in Europe. He also recruited a teenage brother to go to Syria. Their father, in Belgium, has publicly denounced Abaaoud’s activities. On at least one occasion he was reported to have been killed in Syria, possibly as a ruse to help him enter Europe.
His image became infamous in Europe last year when a video surfaced on the Internet showing a laughing Abaaoud wearing a floppy hat and driving a pickup truck towing a group of tethered corpses through a field in northern Syria, apparently en route to a mass grave.
“Before, we towed jet skis, motorcycles, quad bikes, big trailers filled with gifts for vacation in Morocco,” Abaaoud says, mugging for the camera as he pilots the Dodge pickup through a field. “Now, thank God, following God’s path, we’re towing apostates, infidels who are fighting us.”
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